So, I have a child with a neurological disability.
Because of this, it's hard to find places where he is allowed to belong. Summer camp’s a perfect example; we’re sending him to the *only* camp that will support children with his type of disability anywhere near me, and it’s still a 45-min drive out to the middle of nowhere (thankfully there are buses). I had to get on a waitlist in January. The other places that are closer by and cheaper won't take him. It costs over six thousand dollars for two months 😱.
Rejection by various institutions, daycares, summer camps, schools, and babysitters has been a constant theme in the six short years of his life.
It makes me so, incredibly, red-hot-fire-angry that our society just pushes people out when it doesn’t want to deal with the inconvenience of their differences.
There are very few options if you can’t fit into the status quo. You might simply retreat, to save yourself the bother.
Or you stay, but you deal with people trying to push you away, every day.
People who smile and say they are “trying to help” when they pull the rug from under you.
People who assume there’s no way someone like YOU could ever achieve THAT, and it’s a waste of their time to make an effort.
Tell me, have you ever felt this angry?
Have you ever felt silenced or put aside for some bogus reason? Did you see it happen to someone else?
Did you feel an anger so deep inside your body that you couldn’t even yell or scream about it?
There are so many ways to improve on your career path or your skillset. To position yourself differently by doing X, Y, Z. Most of the time, that’s what I focus on communicating.
And those things help quite a bit.
But they don’t change some fundamentally unequal ways that our society functions.
And I’m sooo not here to gaslight you out of what you know to be true.
So if you feel angry…it’s valid.
However; I’ve found that there’s more than one kind of anger.
There’s a type of anger that drains you and causes harm to yourself and others. It’s really Insecurity that’s dressed up as Anger.
But there’s also a type of anger that results from having a healthy reaction to a fucked-up situation.
It motivates you to effect real change — and allows you to draw the strength and confidence to keep chipping away at it, over time.
That kind of rage is very, very powerful. Others tremble to witness it.
…It’s because it’s really Love.
Love that says, “I am heartbroken, I am SO disappointed, but there is a path forward to something more spacious, and I will walk it.”
I can’t change EVERYthing. But I can wrap my arms around everyone in my field of interest who’s been pushed away or felt burnt out and defeated, wherever I see it happening.
I can respond with belief when others respond with skepticism.
And I happen to think that actually CAN make a world of difference, over time.
You have power. Use it.
XOXO,
Cathy